


Same Song, New Verse

by thatsrightdollface



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Brotherhood, Character Study, Gen, Guilt, Identity, Sakaar, Spoilers, Thor Ragnarok SPOILERS, those awful zappy weapons
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-01 09:47:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12702336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatsrightdollface/pseuds/thatsrightdollface
Summary: Loki, God of Mischief, son of Odin – or Laufey, or maybe even that frozen blood-smeary battlefield where he’d been abandoned as a tiny helpless thing – wanted Thor to feel what he felt.





	Same Song, New Verse

**Author's Note:**

> Hi!! Thanks for clicking on the story -- if you read it, I hope you enjoy it. :) Sorry for any mistakes I made. Have a good day!

Loki, God of Mischief, son of Odin – or Laufey, or maybe even that frozen blood-smeary battlefield where he’d been abandoned as a tiny helpless thing – wanted Thor to feel what he felt.  If anyone in all the realms could be on his side, truly, chortling at his jokes and getting too eagerly roped in to one harebrained scheme after another, it had always used to be Thor.  His brother, the muscle, the golden son with a playful swagger he hadn’t even had to practice in the mirror.  Before the bitterness had seeped in like frostbite, Thor had been there.

Loki still remembered how it had felt to pull on his trademark whimsical-bloody smile as something other than a threat, back then, dragging his brother in close to whisper plots meant for his ears alone.  They had run through those echoing golden Asgardian halls, Loki clutching at Thor’s sleeve so he wouldn’t get left behind.  They were day and night; they were two very different instruments playing the same song.  It had been simple, for a while, before the throne. 

All that had been no good, of course.  Loki always felt left behind in the end.  He told himself he’d learned want and fury before happiness, because he’d been dropped in a shattered throne room and left for dead.  Maybe it was even true that the wrongness of that broken place had hitchhiked along with him through the rest of that life.  It had definitely stained him now, like that time he’d accidentally ruined Thor’s favorite fancy get up way back when and his brother’s eyes had sparked with angry lightning.  Just a little lightning, though, and then he’d sighed and said, “Fix it, brother.  Father’s visitors are coming in _two hours_ and we have to hold still and look nice in those horrible chairs.”

Loki had always been able to fix things, before.  A clever trick, a theatrical wave of his hand and then a snickering bow.  He missed those days.

He missed those days whenever he woke up and his illusion magic had slipped right off like a sock under the blankets, and he’d found himself looking at hands crackling with a blue frost that had sunken down to his bones.  He missed those days when he saw Thor with all his new human friends, surrounding himself with a warmth Loki wasn’t sure he could ever provide, anymore.  Didn’t he know those Midgardians weren’t going to last?  It should have felt more like Thor had adopted some puppies than that Loki’d been replaced, and yet it somehow didn’t. 

He missed those old, easier days especially while he was lying on the floor of the Grandmaster of Sakaar’s leisure ship garage, twitching with a pain that raced under his skin like scrambling electric claws.  He knew why Thor had left him there.  He hated it, obviously.  Who wouldn’t?  But he knew.  If Thor hadn’t, wouldn’t Asgard have fallen for sure?  If he hadn’t, wouldn’t he have become a monster’s slave, again, forced to fight in a gaudy arena or maybe even get melted into jelly if Loki wasn’t able to think quick and save him? 

And now that he thought about it – to distract himself from, you know, the gut-wrenching agony of breathing – Loki wondered if Thor just hadn’t understood him all those times he’d said what he wanted.  Maybe Thor wanted the same damn thing.  It’d be kind of fitting, right?  They each wanted to have their pain be understood.  Now, Loki knew how Thor had felt every time he collapsed shaking when that Valkyrie huntress zapped him with her awful little metal thing.  He had dropped down with his skin flushed and his eyes squeezed tight with hurt so many times.  Loki had thought about it, but he hadn’t really _thought_ about it.

It probably shouldn’t have taken him so long to imagine Thor’s pain as his own. 

Loki had crowed that now, _now_ Thor knew what it felt like to get bashed around by his friend the Hulk, after all.  He had approached his brother in the slave chambers, floor sticky with rearranged guts and years’ worth of caked on horror…  He’d tried to carry empathy with him, but it all came out wrong.  He’d almost been able to smell that place through his unreal projected self – it would have been like the inside of a dragon’s stomach, all sour and thick.  Thor looked desperate, but even then Loki had drawled that it wasn’t easy to think you were one thing and then learn the lie of it.  He had been talking about Thor learning that he wasn’t Odin’s firstborn heir anymore, but of course he was thinking of his own self.  All those ways the world had betrayed him, while Thor had never understood at all.

Loki’s empathy was wheedling, hinting at what he wanted from Thor more than anything.  No.  No, Loki’s want had smothered his empathy with a pillow.

He wanted Thor to understand him.  To think of him a little, and say all the right words.

But hadn’t he tried?  Wouldn’t he have tried harder, if Loki’d given him the chance?

_I thought the world of you._

_I mourned for you._

_I cried for you._

_Can I have my brother back, now?_

__Loki was afraid that if he tried to feel what Thor did, really feel it, he would want to be so much better than he believed he could be.  But Thor couldn’t truly think Loki _wanted_ him enslaved or turned to gloppy meat jelly, right?  And if he did, then, well.  Well, that would have to hurt a bit.

But Thor had left the little control for clicking _off_ the zappy electric pain just a couple feet away from Loki.  Did his brother imagine he would be able to crawl after it, and he was just buying himself a little time?  Ah, maybe, but Loki couldn’t move.  His whole skin had betrayed him, from the cold, cold bones to the sweat-sticky fingertips.  For the moment, he figured he just had to wait it out.      

It was too late to flash some magic and set back the score, after all.  And it was way too late to set them both up as twin princes of Sakaar, too – like night and day, again, and back on the same level.  Loki would have reached out a hand to pull Thor back up with him, back to the decadent bars and the garish Grandmaster’s fashion sense.  And yes, he saw the irony, since he hadn’t been willing to grab Thor’s hand and let himself get pulled back to Asgard…  Shhh.  It was different being the merciful brother than having mercy taken on him again and again. 

Loki told his brain to shut up a few times, lying on that fancy ship garage floor.  How could Thor have known what he would have traded for things to be different?  For his own self to be different, and the shamelessly indulgent fanfiction play he’d written back when he’d been pretending to be Odin to be real?  Thor clutching at him, wanting him close.  Forgiving him.  But every time that almost came true, didn’t Loki just shoot himself in the foot?

He was getting predictable.  Thor already knew his punchline, and Loki was getting so, so tired of telling it.  Trading Asgard and countless lives for a nice apartment on a horrible murder planet?  Loki’s heart hadn’t really been in this one.  He hoped Thor would let him forget about it, sometime, after all this awful zapping business.  He hoped Thor would realize the betrayal wasn’t necessarily the end of his plan, and he’d never wanted to screw him over forever.  Not that it really changed anything, maybe.  Not that it really changed anything at all. 

Loki daydreamed, too, before Korg the rock creature finally found him there.  That’s the sort of thing a trickster god had to do sometimes, spinning the world like thread, squishing it like putty between fingers cold and brittle as ice.  He had to plot, and sulk, and dream, or none of his plans would have any kick to them.

By the time Korg clicked off the Valkyrie’s torture stick, Loki had imagined through a dozen or so scenarios where he returned triumphant and helpful and Thor declared him changed for the better.  He imagined the oil out of his inky hair, and his clothes a bit nicer than they really were after all he’d been through without a wardrobe change.  He saw the ancient green spellfire in his own eyes, and imagined Thor would be proud of him.

 “My brother is worth forgiving,” Thor might have declared in that laughing, booming voice he used when coffee was involved and murderous alien gladiator arenas were far, far away.  “He came through for us when we needed him, didn’t he?”  And then, in a quieter voice…  An honest voice, that meant Thor was studying him for battle wounds… “You’ll stick around, won’t you, Loki?”

Loki imagined Thor clapping him on the back, hand so solid and warm.  He wouldn’t even sway forward under the weight of that hand.  They would stand as equals, and smile without speaking – it would just be understood that they were on the same page, right? – and turn to face another enemy together as they had so many times before.

If Loki’s ears hadn’t been playing tricks like the rest of him, it had definitely sounded like Thor believed their juggling dance of love and hate, betrayal and forgiveness could finally end.  Maybe it had meant something that Thor’s victories had finally started tasting a little like Loki’s own.   

And so, when he could stand up again, shivering, breathing heavy and raw, Loki knew what he would have wanted to say to his brother... Even if he also knew he wasn't going to actually try any of that "heart-on-his-sleeve" business.

He told the rock guy that his gaggle of rebels looked like they needed a leader, and there you go – right as rain.  It was easier than Loki'd thought it would be this time. He was back in the game, rolling his dice, and he knew exactly where he was going.  He had planned out just the kind of cocky entrance he would make in the battle for Asgard, too, and he honestly hoped that Thor would be there to see it.


End file.
